PHYSICS

FOLIO FORM5
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

Name: Salleh Bin Osman Class : 5 science 1 I/C Number : 970811-13-5505 Teachers Name : Mr Lee Hong Leng

Contents
1. Introduction and definition of electromagnetic waves. 2. Electromagnetic Spectrum 3. Characteristics of electromagnetic waves 4. Type of electromagnetic waves and use of Electromagnetic waves in various fields

5. Summary

Introduction and definition of electromagnetic waves

Electromagnetic radiation (EM radiation or EMR) is a form of radiant energy, propagating through space via photon wave particles. In a vacuum, it propagates at a characteristic speed, the speed of light, normally in straight lines. EMR is emitted and absorbed by charged particles. As an electromagnetic wave, it has both electric andmagnetic field components, which oscillate in a fixed relationship to one another, perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of energy and wave propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is associated with EM fields that are free to propagate themselves without the continuing influence of the moving charges that produced them, because they have achieved sufficient distance from those charges. Thus, EMR is sometimes referred to as the far field. In this language, the near field refers to EM fields near the charges and current that directly produced them, as for example with simple magnets and static electricityphenomena. In EMR, the magnetic and electric fields are each induced by changes in the other type of field, thus propagating itself as a wave. This close relationship assures that both types of fields in EMR stand in phase and in a fixed ratio of intensity to each other, with maxima and nodes in each found at the same places in space. EMR carries energysometimes called radiant energythrough space continuously away from the source (this is not true of the near-field part of the EM field). EMR also carries both momentum and angular momentum. These properties may all be imparted to matter with which it interacts. EMR is produced from other types of

energy when created, and it is converted to other types of energy when it is destroyed. The photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic interaction, and is the basic "unit" or constituent of all forms of EMR. The quantum nature of light becomes more apparent at high frequencies (thus high photon energy). Such photons behave more like particles than lower-frequency photons do. In classical physics, EMR is considered to be produced when charged particles are accelerated by forces acting on them. Electrons are responsible for emission of most EMR because they have low mass, and therefore are easily accelerated by a variety of mechanisms. Rapidly moving electrons are most sharply accelerated when they encounter a region of force, so they are responsible for producing much of the highest frequency electromagnetic radiation observed in nature. Quantum processes can also produce EMR, such as when atomic nuclei undergo gamma decay, and processes such as neutral pion decay. The effects of EMR upon biological systems (and also to many other chemical systems, under standard conditions) depends both upon the radiation's power and frequency. For lower frequencies of EMR up to those of visible light (i.e., radio, microwave, infrared), the damage done to cells and also to many ordinary materials under such conditions is determined mainly by heating effects, and thus by the radiation power. By contrast, for higher frequency radiations at ultraviolet frequencies and above (i.e., X-rays and gamma rays) the damage to chemical materials and living cells by EMR is far larger than that done by simple heating, due to the ability of single photons in such high frequency EMR to damage individual molecules chemically.

SOURCES OF ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

Matter is made up of elementary particles called atoms. Every atom has a nucleus at its centre which is surrounded by orbiting electrons. Electron are charged particles and they move around the nucleus in orbits, each of which is at a specific energy level. When a charged electron moves from an orbit with a particular energy level to one of a lower energy level, electromagnetic wave are emitted. Electromagnetic waves are also produced when a charged particle oscillates.

Electromagnetic Spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.[1] The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object has a different meaning, and is instead the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object. The electromagnetic spectrum extends from below the low frequencies used for modern radiocommunication to gamma radiation at the short-wavelength (highfrequency) end, thereby covering wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atom. The limit for long wavelengths is the size of the universe itself, while it is thought that the short wavelength limit is in the vicinity of the Planck length,[2] although in principle the spectrum is infinite and continuous. Most parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are used in science for spectroscopic and other probing interactions, as ways to study and characterize matter.[3] In addition, radiation from various parts of the spectrum has found many other uses for communications and manufacturing (seeelectromagnetic radiation for more applications).

A diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum, showing various properties across the range of frequencies and wavelengths

Characteristics of electromagnetic waves

Electromagnetic waves are transverse waves, similar to water waves in the ocean or the waves seen on a guitar string. This is as opposed to the compression waves of sound. As you learned in Wave Motion, all waves have amplitude, wavelength, velocity and frequency.

Amplitude
The amplitude of electromagnetic waves relates to its intensity or brightness (as in the case of visible light). With visible light, the brightness is usually measured in lumens. With other wavelengths the intensity of the radiation, which is power per unit area or watts per square meter is used. The square of the amplitude of a wave is the intensity.

Wavelength
The wavelengths of electromagnetic waves go from extremely long to extremely short and everything in between. The wavelengths determine how matter responds to the electromagnetic wave, and those characteristics determine the name we give that particular group of wavelengths.

Velocity
The velocity of electromagnetic waves in a vacuum is approximately 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second, the same as the speed of light. When these waves pass through matter, they slow down slightly, according to their wavelength.

Frequency
The frequency of any waveform equals the velocity divided by the wavelength. The units of measurement are in cycles per second or Hertz.

Type of electromagnetic waves

1) Radio waves 2) Microwaves 3) Infrared 4) Visible light 5) Ultraviolet 6) X-rays 7) Gamma rays

You know more about the electromagnetic spectrum than you may think. The image below shows where you might encounter each portion of the EM spectrum in your day-to-day life.

The electromagnetic spectrum from lowest energy/longest wavelength (at the top) to highest energy/shortest wavelength (at the bottom).

Radio wave
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light. Radio waves havefrequencies from 300 GHz to as low as 3 KHz, and corresponding wavelengths ranging from 1 millimeter (0.039 in) to 100 kilometers (62 mi). Like all other electromagnetic waves, they travel at the speed of light. Naturally occurring radio waves are made by lightning, or by astronomical objects. Artificially generated radio waves are used for fixed and mobile radio communication, broadcasting, radar and other navigation systems,communications satellites, computer networks and innumerable other applications. Different frequencies of radio waves have different propagation characteristics in the Earth's atmosphere; long waves may cover a part of the Earth very consistently, shorter waves can reflect off the ionosphereand travel around the world, and much shorter wavelengths bend or reflect very little and travel on a line of sight. To prevent interference between different users, the artificial generation and use of radio waves is strictly regulated by law, coordinated by an international body called the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The radio spectrum is divided into a number of radio bands on the basis of frequency, allocated to different uses.

Mircowaves
Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz.[1][2] This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF (millimeter waves), and various sources use different boundaries. In all cases, microwave includes the entire SHF band (3 to 30 GHz, or 10 to 1 cm) at minimum, with RF engineering often putting the lower boundary at 1 GHz (30 cm), and the upper around 100 GHz (3 mm). The prefix "micro-" in "microwave" is not meant to suggest a wavelength in the micro meter range. It indicates that microwaves are "small" compared to waves used in typical radio broadcasting, in that they have shorter wavelengths. The boundaries between far infrared light, terahertz radiation, microwaves, and ultra-highfrequency radio waves are fairly arbitrary and are used variously between different fields of study. Microwave technology is extensively used for point-to-point telecommunications (i.e., non broadcast uses). Microwaves are especially suitable for this use since they are more easily focused into narrower beams than radio waves, allowing frequency reuse; their comparatively higher frequencies allow broad bandwidth and high data transmission rates, and antenna sizes are smaller than at lower frequencies because antenna size is inversely proportional to transmitted frequency. Microwaves are used in spacecraft communication, and much of the world's data, TV, and telephone communications are transmitted long distances by microwaves between ground stations and communications satellites. Microwaves are also employed in microwave ovens and in radar technology.

A microwave telecommunications tower on Wrights Hill in Wellington, New Zealand

Infrared
Infrared (IR) light is electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light, extending from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers (nm) to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a frequency range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz.[1] Most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Infrared radiation was discovered in 1800 by astronomer William Herschel, who discovered a type of invisible radiation in the light spectrum beyond red light, by means of its effect upon a thermometer. Slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has a critical effect on Earth's climate. Infrared light is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotationalvibrational movements. Infrared energy elicits vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared energy range.[2] Infrared light is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected. Infrared astronomy uses sensorequipped telescopes to penetrate dusty regions of space, such as molecular clouds; detect objects such as planets, and to view highly red-shifted objects from the early days of the universe.[3] Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatus.

A false color image of two people taken in long-wavelength infrared (body-temperature thermal) light

Visible Light
Visible light (commonly referred to simply as light) is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to thehuman eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight.[1] Visible light is usually defined as having awavelength in the range of 400 nanometres (nm), or 400109 m, to 700 nanometres between the infrared, with longer wavelengths and the ultraviolet, with shorter wavelengths.[2][3] These numbers do not represent the absolute limits of human vision, but the approximate range within which most people can see reasonably well under most circumstances. Various sources define visible light as narrowly as 420 to 680[4][5] to as broadly as 380 to 800 nm.[6][7] Under ideal laboratory conditions, people can see infrared up to at least 1050 nm,[8] children and young adults ultraviolet down to about 310 to 313 nm.[9][10][11] Primary properties of visible light are intensity, propagation direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum, and polarisation, while its speed in a vacuum, 299,792,458 meters per second, is one of the fundamentalconstants of nature. Visible light, as with all types of electromagnetic radiation (EMR), is experimentally found to always move at this speed in vacuum.[citation needed] In common with all types of EMR, visible light is emitted and absorbed in tiny "packets" called photons, and exhibits properties of both waves and particles. This property is referred to as the waveparticle duality. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.

The Sun is Earth's primary source of light. About 44% of the sun's electromagnetic radiation that reaches the ground is in the visible light range.

Ultra Violet
Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer thanX-rays, that is, in the range between 400 nm and 10 nm, corresponding to photon energies from 3 eV to 124 eV. It is so-named because the spectrum consists of electromagnetic waves with frequencies higher than those that humans identify as the color violet. These frequencies are invisible to most humans except those with aphakia. Near-UV is visible to a number of insects and birds. UV light is found in sunlight and is emitted by electric arcs and specialized lights such as mercury lamps and black lights. It can cause chemical reactions, and causes many substances to glow or fluoresce. A large fraction of UV, including all that reaches the surface of the Earth, is classified as non-ionizing radiation. The higher energies of the ultraviolet spectrum from wavelengths about 120 nm to 10 nm ('extreme' ultraviolet) are ionizing, but, due to this effect, these wavelengths are absorbed by nitrogen and even more strongly by dioxygen, and thus have an extremely short path length through air.[1] However, the entire spectrum of ultraviolet radiation has some of the biological features of ionizing radiation: It does far more damage to many molecules in biological systems than is accounted for by simple heating effects (an example is sunburn). These properties derive from the ultraviolet photon's power to alter chemical bonds in molecules, even without having enough energy to ionize atoms.

Electric arcs produce UV light, and arc welders must wear eye protection to prevent welder's flash.
Although ultraviolet radiation is invisible to the human eye, most people are aware of the effect it has on the skin of fair-skinned people, i.e., the suntan and sunburn. Normal human skin responds to exposure to small doses of this kind of radiation by increasing the amount of protective melanin in the skin's outer layers; too much of this radiation in too short a period of time, however, results in cellular damage from radiation burn. In fact, the damaging effects of short-wavelength and mid-wavelength UV means that life on Earth outside of the deep oceans is possible only because the atmosphere, [2] primarily the ozone layer, filters out the vast majority of this light. A small amount of the shorter wavelength ultraviolet reaches the surface, which causes sunburn, long-term skin damage, and skin cancer. Ultraviolet is also responsible for the formation of vitamin D in organisms that make this vitamin (including humans). The UV spectrum thus has many effects, both beneficial and damaging, to human health.

X-rays
X-radiation (composed of X-rays) is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Most Xrays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequenciesin the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (31016 Hz to 31019 Hz) and energies in the range 100 eV to 100 keV. However, much higher-energy X-rays can be generated for medical and industrial uses, for example radiotherapy, which utilizes linear accelerators to generate X-rays in the ranges of 620 MeV. X-ray wavelengths are shorter than those of UV rays and typically longer than those of gamma rays. In many languages, X-radiation is referred to with terms meaning Rntgen radiation X-rays with photon energies above 510 keV (below 0.20.1 nm wavelength) are calledhard X-rays, while those with lower energy are called soft X-rays.[4] Due to their penetrating ability hard X-rays are widely used to image the inside of objects, e.g. inmedical radiography and airport security. As a result, the term X-ray is metonymicallyused to refer to a radiographic image produced using this method, in addition to the method itself. Since the wavelengths of hard X-rays are similar to the size of atoms they are also useful for determining crystal structures by X-ray crystallography. By contrast, soft X-rays are easily absorbed in air and the attenuation length of 600 eV (~2 nm) X-rays in water is less than 1 micrometer.[5]

X-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, with wavelengths shorter than visible light. Different applications use different parts of the X-ray spectrum.

Gamma Ray
Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays, and denoted by the Greek letter , refers to electromagnetic radiation of extremely high frequency and therefore high energy per photon. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation, and are thus biologically hazardous. They are classically produced by the decay from high energy states ofatomic nuclei (gamma decay), but are also created by other processes. Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900, while studying radiation emitted from radium. Villard's radiation was named "gamma rays" by Ernest Rutherford in 1903. Natural sources of gamma rays on Earth include gamma decay from naturally occurring radioisotopes, and secondary radiation from atmospheric interactions with cosmic ray particles. Rare terrestrial natural sources produce gamma rays that are not of a nuclear origin, such as lightning strikes and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. Additionally, gamma rays are also produced by a number of astronomical processes in which very high-energy electrons are produced, that in turn cause secondary gamma rays via bremsstrahlung, inverse Compton scattering and synchrotron radiation. However, a large fraction of such astronomical gamma rays are screened by Earth's atmosphere and can only be detected by spacecraft. Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 exahertz (or >1019 Hz), and therefore have energies above 100keV and wavelengths less than 10 picometers (less than the diameter of an atom). However, this is not a hard and fast definition, but rather only a rule-of-thumb description for natural processes. Gamma rays fromradioactive decay are defined as gamma rays no matter what their energy, so that there is no lower limit to gamma energy derived from radioactive decay. Gamma decay commonly produces energies of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV. In astronomy, gamma rays are defined by their energy, and no production process need be specified. The energies of gamma rays from astronomical sources range over 10 TeV, at a level far too large to result from radioactive decay. [1] A notable example is extremely powerful bursts of high-energy radiation normally referred to as long duration gamma-ray bursts, which produce gamma rays by a mechanism not compatible with radioactive decay. These bursts of gamma rays, thought to be due to the collapse of stars called hypernovae, are the most powerful events so far discovered in the cosmos.

Illustration of an emission of a gamma ray () from an atomic nucleus.

Summary

Electromagnetic waves and the electromagnetic spectrum are at the very core of radio signal propagation, and radio technology as a whole. While the mathematics behind electromagnetic waves and the electromagnetic spectrum can become particularly complicated, it is not necessary to have to deal with this branch of science everyday. However it is always useful to be able to have a working knowledge. Although electromagnetic waves can help human to do things that human cant do, likes radio waves transfer information in the speed of light or using X-rays to capture the images of our inner bones. But we should not be always using those kind of things because it may cause DISEASES or CANCER to you.